The Queenstown Lakes District Council has called an extraordinary meeting, to be held behind closed doors tomorrow, to discuss "airport litigation - notice of motion".
Mayor Vanessa van Uden called the meeting on March 27, just three days after the last public-excluded extraordinary council meeting, held on March 24, to discuss "airport litigation" relating to the controversial strategic alliance between Queenstown and Auckland Airports.
Under the Local Government Act 1987 councils can exclude the public from meetings to protect legal privilege.
The meeting will be held at 3pm tomorrow and follows a preliminary hearing held in the High Court at Auckland yesterday, where the pending High Court hearing, scheduled for May, was discussed.
The alliance, announced last July, came to the attention of the High Court in August, after the Queenstown Community Strategic Asset Group and Air New Zealand lodged independent, but related, applications seeking a judicial review and an injunction to stop the issue of any further shares.
Council regulatory and corporate services general manager Roger Taylor said part of the discussion yesterday concerned the location of the hearing - it had originally been set down for the High Court at Christchurch, but after the February 22 earthquake an alternative court had to be found.
Meanwhile, the council had spent $401,065 on litigation costs and legal fees related to the strategic alliance between Queenstown and Auckland Airports to March 31 - up from $386,199 as at February 28, he said.
While there was still no costing for the PriceWaterhouse-Coopers report on the alliance, made available late last month, Mr Taylor said he "would expect to have it soon".
"Relatively little" feedback had been generated by the 73-page report, which analysed the "fairness" of the alliance and covered Queenstown Airport, its constitution, the July 2010 transaction, the regulatory environment within which it was made and the airport valuation.
When asked why there had been little feedback, Mr Taylor said he was unsure.
"It would be really difficult to speculate [on why] - the report is available and I guess those that are interested have downloaded the report.
"It might take some people a while to read," Mr Taylor said.
"The comments we've had have been very small and have just been essentially there was nothing that surprised them in the report."
While the council still planned to undertake community consultation over the alliance, what form that would take may differ from what was originally planned.
Mr Taylor said that was largely because of the March 21 announcement Queenstown and Auckland Airports had cancelled the subscription agreement under which Auckland Airport could increase its shareholding in Queenstown Airport to between 30% and 35% by June 30 this year.
"It is still council's intention to undertake a consultation with the community, [but] the decision that the airport companies made to cancel the subscription agreement and therefore take tranche two away has caused us to rethink that consultation.
"We don't want to undertake consultation just to undertake consultation."
However, the council hoped to carry out consultation to help inform it in the future, but as yet there were no firm plans on what form that consultation would take, Mr Taylor said.
